The Five Factor Model of Personality

The Five-Factor Model (FFM) posits that five independent dimensions can parsimoniously account for all personality traits. Although research on the FFM has become popular in the last two decades, the history of this approach can be traced back over 100 years to the work of Sir Francis Galton. Its history is grounded on what has come to be known as a lexical hypothesis (Goldberg, 1981, 1993). The basic premise of the lexical hypothesis is that all we need to know about personality is contained in natural languages. That is, the terms we commonly (and sometimes uncommonly) use to describe ourselves, and each other, contain all the information necessary to discern the fundamental dimensions of human personality.

Then, also influenced by Allport, Cattell, and Eysenck’s theories, the FFM provided an integrative descriptive model for personality research. Since the 1990s, there has been an

explosion of research with tools derived from the FFM and adapted in several languages and to different cultures. Although there continues to be disagreement about the number of dimensions necessary to account for all personality traits (Ashton, Lee, Perugini, Szarota, de Vries, & Di Blas, 2004; Eysenk, 1992; Goldberg, 1993), this model has been defended by several scientists (Costa & McCrae, 1985; 1990; Widiger, 2002; DeRaad, 1998; Digman, 1989; 1990). Research using the FFM has included studies of diverse populations (McCrae, Costa, del Pilar, Rolland, & Parker, 1998), often followed over decades (Costa & McCrae, 1992), employed multiple tools of assessment (Funder, Kolar, & Blackman, 1995), and case studies (Costa & McCrae, 1998). Some researchers indicate that the five dimensions of personality could have a biological base (McCrae, Jang, Livesley, Riemann, & Angleitner, 2001), may be generalized across several cultures (McCrae & Costa, 1997), be relatively gender invariant (Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001), and remain relatively stable across age, especially in middle and old age (Costa, Herbst, McCrae, & Siegler, 2000; McCrae, &

Costa, 2006). In other words, the FFM is “the Christmas tree on which findings of stability, heritability, consensual validation, cross-cultural invariance, and predictive utility are hung like ornaments” (Costa & McCrae, 1993).

The FFM consists of the following bipolar trait dimensions: Neuroticism vs. Emotional Stability, Extraversion vs. Introversion, Openness to experience vs. Closedness to experience, Agreeableness vs. Antagonism, and Conscientiousness vs. Negligence (Costa & McCrae, 1990). Each of these broad dimensions includes six facets or lower-order traits (Digman, 1990; McCrae & Costa, 1999; De Raad, 2002). These five dimensions used to group 30 facets or traits (see Table 2):

Neuroticism is characterized by the tendency to experience distress and frequent negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, shyness, loss of control in difficult situations,

this domain are usually characterized by emotional stability; they are relaxed most of the time, rarely get upset, and remain calm in stressful or dangerous situations; they do not worry about things that may happen in the future, and generally feel secure and self-satisfied.

Individuals with high scores in this domain regularly present negative affects, a sense of insecurity, and self-awareness, are vulnerable to stress, sensitive to criticism and to failure. In the clinical situation, there is strong evidence for the relevance of Neuroticism in the assessment of personality disorders (Schroeder, Wormsworth, & Livesley, 1992).

Neuroticism correlates significantly with various measures of illness (Costa & Mc Crae, 1987). There is evidence that neuroticism is involved in processes described in illness behavior models (Larsen, 1992). It is a strong predictor of psychological distress (Ormel &

Wohlfarth, 1991), it predicts both positive and negative moods, and it is associated with higher interests in social comparison and with less favorable reactions in cancer patients (Van der Zee, Buunk, & Sanderman, 1998). Neuroimaging studies have found that Neuroticism is associated with brain activity at rest or in response to aversive or novel stimuli in brain regions associated with negative affect, including the amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex (Deckersbach, Miller, Klibanski, Fischman, & Rauch, 2006). High Neuroticism has been associated with lower levels of serotonergic function and with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This association is consistent with the importance of the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenalin axis in response to threat and other stressors (McEwen, 1998).

Extraversion is associated with sociability, dynamism and the propensity to experience positive emotions (Costa & McCrae, 1992). The extroverts are communicative, expansive, sociable, warm, cheerful, enthusiastic, love to be in a group and be the leader, active, easily bored in the absence of external stimuli and tend to seek excitement. Extraversion is positively correlated with self-esteem (Costa, McCrae, & Dye, 1991), and is related to various health-related behaviors (Scheier & Carver, 1987). For example, it predicts subjective

well-being at midlife (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998). Introverts are reserved, calm, and independent.

They are usually shy when meeting new people, but this is not an indication that they suffer from social anxiety. They are not as enthusiastic as extraverts are which, however, does not mean that they are pessimistic or unhappy. Several brain-imaging studies have demonstrated that Extraversion is predictive of brain activity in cortical areas influenced by dopamine during working memory task (Gray & Braver, 2002; Gray, Burgess, Schaefer, Yarkoni, Larsen, & Braver, 2005). Extraversion may also be related to the ways in which individuals are motivated to perform difficult cognitive tasks and even to how those tasks are processed in the brain (DeYoung & Gray, 2009).

Openness to experience refers to the tendency to dream, to the intuitive perception of the feelings of others or oneself, the taste of intellectual activities, as well as openness, and tolerance of different ideas and values. Qualifications from lexical studies describe this factor using terms such as originality, imagination, broad interests, and boldness. McCrae and Costa (1996) suggest that individuals with a high level on this dimension are intellectually and aesthetically sensitive. Open people tend to be cognitively flexible, curious, imaginative, score higher on intelligence tests, and pursue higher levels of education (McCrae, 1994).

People who score low on this domain are usually characterized by conformism, resistance to novelty, and conventionality. In organizational settings, Openness to experience has been associated with increased creative behavior (George & Zhou, 2001) and job performance (Bing & Lounsbury, 2000), and it was negatively related to level of salary (Seibert &

Kraimer, 2001). In addition, Aitken (2004) provided evidence of the relevance of Openness to experience for intercultural social efficacy. In clinical situations, aspects of Openness to experience seem to be related to several disorders (Costa & Widiger, 1994) and to high-risk health behavior (Booth-Kewley & Vickers, 1994). Moreover, Openness correlate positively with brain regions linked to working memory and attention (Sutin, Beason-Held, Resnick, &

Costa, 2009); the two executive functions have been consistently linked to fluid intelligence, the ability to solve novel problems (Gray & Thompson, 2004). However, Openness to experience is conceptually totally different from the construct of “intelligence” (McCrae &

Costa, 1997). The neuropsychological model of Openness (DeYoung, 2006) implicates the dopaminergic system, specifically projections to the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex.

Agreeableness relates mainly to the attitude in interpersonal relationships and is the ability to easily get along with and trust others. Individuals whose level is high in Agreeableness are soft, gentle, friendly, pleasant, and have a tender heart (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Agreeable people are less likely to engage in risky health behaviors and are more optimistic about their future health risk (Vollrath, Knoch, & Kassano, 1999). These persons select tactics that minimize disruption during conflict episodes, and they continue to talk more with their conflict partners after conflict (Jensen-Campbell & Graziano, 2001). People who score low in this domain are usually characterized by intransigence, direct expression of disagreement, criticism. Agreeableness appears to reflect a tendency toward the maintenance of social stability, encompassing traits reflecting pro-sociality vs. anti-sociality: compassion, politeness, a general tendency to be interested in and considerate of the needs, desires and feelings of others and to refrain from aggressing or imposing one’s will on others. In the interpersonal domain there are several correlates of Agreeableness, including more elevated ratings of peer performance on group exercises (Bernardin, Cooke, & Villanova, 2000), or interpersonal skills in teams (Neuman & Wright, 1999). Several fMRI studies using trait measures of empathy have reported findings that are directly relevant to the link between agreeableness and social information processing. In these studies, empathy was positively associated with activity in the mirror neuron system (Gazzola, Aziz-Zadeh, & Keysers, 2006).

Other brain regions, beyond those typically identified as involved in social information

processing, have also been associated with trait measures of empathy. For example, Chakrabarti & Baron-Cohen, 2006) demonstrated that viewing different emotional expressions led to correlations of empathy with activity in brain regions functionally relevant to specific emotions, in particular happiness with a stronger activation of the ventral striatal reward system in participants with a high level of empathy.

Conscientiousness refers to the capacity to plan ahead, to delay gratification, and work steadfastly toward attaining goals (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Conscientious individuals are focused, task-oriented, reliable, dependable, careful, well organized, punctual, ambitious, and persevering (McCrae & Costa, 1987). They are also characterized by a sense of competence along with organizational skills, self-discipline, anticipation, and reflection. Equally, Conscientiousness appears to reflect the tendency to maintain motivational stability within the individual, to make plans and carry them out in an organized manner. In other words, Conscientiousness may represent the manifestation in personality of the ability and tendency to constrain immediate impulses in favor of longer-term goals. Contrariwise, people who score low in this domain are little concerned by organization, method; they improvise, and are frivolous, irresponsible, undependable, and forgetful. Thus, Heaven (1996) reported Conscientiousness to be negatively related to vandalism, and Clower & Bothwell (2001) found Conscientiousness to be negatively related to inmate recidivism. When considering research on the biological basis, the findings show that serotonin is associated with Conscientiousness (Manuck, Flory, McCaffery, Matthews, Mann, & Muldoon, 1998).

Another biological factor that may be related to Conscientiousness is glucose metabolism.

Glucose represents the basic energy source for the brain, and a number of studies indicate that blood glucose is depleted by acts of self-control (Galliot & Baumeister, 2007). The prefrontal cortex seems likely to be involved, given the central role in planning and voluntary control of

behavior, and given that consumption of glucose appears relatively high (Galliot &

Baumeister, 2007).

Table 2. Facet scales of each domain of the Five-Factor Model

Neuroticism vs.

Note. Illustrative trait adjectives associated with each facet are presented in parentheses (Adapted from Costa & McCrae, 1995).

The authors of the FFM (Costa & McCrae, 1992) argue that their model is a general framework for understanding personality and may guide research and gives a comprehensive representation of the differences in behavior, attitudes, and reactions that exist between

individuals. They advance four arguments in favor of this model. First, longitudinal studies conducted by several researchers showed that the five factors are real features that occur specifically in certain situations. Second, words or wordings related to the five factors are found in everyday language and in the main personality questionnaires. Third, the factors are found in different cultures and are not influenced significantly by age and sex. In keeping with this idea, Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness to experiences have all been reported to negatively correlate with age, while Agreeableness and Conscientiousness was related positively with age (McCrae & Costa, 2003). For example, college participants score half a standard deviation lower than adult participants (Costa & McCrae, 1994). Additionally, Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer (2006), examining standardized mean-level change over time, found significant increases up until the age of 60 for Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability. But these changes do not signify any radical shift in personality (Terracciano, Costa, & McCrae, 2006). Concerning gender, women have a higher level in Neuroticism and Agreeableness than men (Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001). Finally, they have a biological basis. The findings demonstrated that resilience is partly heritable and that protective processes operate through both genetic and environmental effects (Kim-Cohen, Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, 2004). It is known that temperament is a unique contributor to personality that forms the basis of the argument supporting personality stability (McCrae, 2000). The fact that temperaments observed at birth can be identified later in life, suggests that the extent of personality changes over the lifespan are limited (Shiner, 1998), and are due to intrinsic maturation, rather than environmental influences (McCrae et al., 2002;

Teracciano, Costa, & McCrae, 2006). Therefore, the FFM is considered to be universal (Costa

& McCrae, 1997) and this universality is observed through cross-observer agreement (McCrae, Costa, Hrebickova, Urbanek, & Martin, 2004). The validity of this model has been assessed mainly with adults but also with adolescents and children (Caspi, 2000; Kim-Cohen,

Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, 2004). Thus, consistent with other research, the study on children exposed to socioeconomic deprivation showed that maternal warmth, stimulating activities, and children’s outgoing temperament appeared to promote positive adjustment in these children. Many studies of personality employing measures of the FFM argued that individuals could be characterized in terms of relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions (McCrae & John, 1992). Therefore, this model postulates that five dimensions allow for an appropriate, economic and synthetic personality description.